Feb 22, 2019

There is still not a lot of dedicated efforts put in by our society to prevent child sexual abuse. Somehow we still don’t seem to want to deal with this issue as a major priority. For example, I have talked with various school officials across the country, and I find that this is still not a high priority topic for school officials. This needs to change.

Last November, there was a major conference of school counselors in Kentucky. I was invited to present a couple of sessions at the conference as well as conduct a pre-conference workshop. My presentations were going to be on the topics of “long term impact of bullying” and “prevention of child sexual abuse” based on my first two books. The pre-conference workshop was going to be on prevention of child sexual abuse. It turned out that the workshop was cancelled because of lack of interest in the topic.

Also, out of my two presentations, the one on “prevention of child sexual abuse” had very few attendees. It became clear to me that most school counselors do not see this as an important topic. I do believe that schools do need to work hard to establish the fact that everyone, and especially school staff dealing with children on a daily basis, must be aware of all issues associated with prevention of child sexual abuse. Children often look at school counselors as trustworthy adults outside their immediate family. It is important for counselors to be aware of all the issues just in case a child shares something that could pose a risk to the child.

 

© 2017 - Sumi Mukherjee
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